The All Encompassing Star Trek Thread

[Matt D]

Paul Giamatti is the villain in Starfleet Academy.

[odessasteps]

“USS ENT-ER-prise” 

[J.H.]

4 hours ago, Matt D said:

Paul Giamatti is the villain in Starfleet Academy.

I'M NOT DRINKING ROMULAN FUCKIN ALE!!

Jamez

[Eivion]

7 hours ago, Matt D said:

Paul Giamatti is the villain in Starfleet Academy.

I really want to hate this because its in Discovery's timeline which I have no interest in, but shit like this makes it hard.

[Raziel]

Half-way through S2, currently watching "Wolf in the Fold".  Nothing's been standout in S2 except for "Doomsday Machine", at least not the quality of S1's top end.  Although Wolf was pretty much a showcase for Doohan.  

[Raziel]

Also, it's kinda jarring to see Klingons without the full makeup.

[Raziel]

So, like I thought, S2 of TOS was a definite drop in quality, so I can see where it started to have issues staying afloat.  I want to double check to see if there's a corelation between when TOS' quality dropped and when everyone started to get sick of Shatner, but yeah, there's a drop.  

On to S3... Holy shit, Spock's Brain was BAD.  

 

Another observation I had, was that it looks like around a quarter of the way into S2, the writers gave up on any kind of development for Kirk, because of Bill, and basically made Spock and McCoy the actual main characters, at least as far as the writing went, it really gave Nimoy and Kelly a whole lot to cook with.

[odessasteps]

You can tell when Gene sort of checks out for S3 and Fred Freiberger is in charge with how bad the quality on the whole goes down. 

[J.H.]

S3 of TOS has a lot of... bad episodes but the little kid in me loves some of the really stupid ones like "The Savage Curtain". 8 year old me loves the idea Captain Kirk doing a MarvelvTwam-Up with Abe Lincoln!

TOS S3 is the Frosted Mini-Whears of Star Trek!

James

[Raziel]

Man, people ain't kidding that S3 takes a fall off the cliff, and even then it started bad.  Up to "Requem for Methuselah" and it's like the writer had no idea how to write Kirk.  "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" is pretty much the high water mark for the Season and it isn't even close.

[odessasteps]

I have a fondness for Spectre of the Gun because of how trippy it is, with the sets and whatnot. Also, Whom Gods Destroy with the great Steven Inhat performance and of course Yvonne Craig. 
 

Speaking of Yvonne Craig, S3 does have going for it some well-remembered lady guest stars in addition to her.  Folks like Barbara Bouchet, young Mariette Hartley, Lee Merriwetner and others. 

Edited June 24, 2024 by odessasteps

[Raziel]

So, TOS is done, and yeah, S3 was rough, although "All Our Yesterdays" was a good one, and better than the final one.

Now onto TAS, which is something I haven't really watched before.  But it's just over a season  and only 22 minutes each so, might as well give it a shot.

 

EDIT: ooooh, early 70's voice acting and sound mixing is gonna make this a little rough...

Edited June 26, 2024 by Raziel

[J.H.]

The real standout episode for TAS is "Yesteryear". So good that it got referenced in TNG

James

Edited June 27, 2024 by J.H.

[Raziel]

Yeah, "Yesteryear" had to have been a script for the S4 of TOS that never happened.  But I'm also growing convinced that a lot of these were TOS scripts that never got made and just chopped down into shorter stuff for the Animated show.  It's actually a lot better than I remember, but I think when Nickelodeon was running TAS reruns in the 80's I only ever caught Yesteryear and something else.  I also love that "The Lorelei Signal" actually had the balls to have Uhura assume command of the Enterprise and be the hero.  Would've liked to have seen that done on TOS.

Gotta say, I also realized how much the Filmation style makes me feel nostaligic (I *really* liked the He-Man cartoons)

[Raziel]

Hey, in TAS apparently the Enterprise had a holodeck.

Yeah, TAS is pretty good overall, with some stuff that couldn't have been done in a live action series at the time because of makeup and such.  I'm good with TAS being the unofficial "Season 4/5".  Now onto the original cast Movies, starting with... shit, TMP.  At least it's the Director's Cut which is better.

 

[odessasteps]

No one will be seated during the 45 minute lighting the Enterprise Scene

[Curt McGirt]

Never thought about this before, but an Alien/Star Trek mashup would be awesome.

[Raziel]

So TMP down.  Having seen it a bunch already I put a more critical eye on it.  Oh yeah, this was the 2 part pilot for Phase 2 stretched out into, wait, 2 HOURS??  I will say, watching the Director's Edition which is all you can get digitally now was an improvement over the Theatrical Cut, mostly because they did fix a lot of story pacing issues and cleaned up a lot of the missing or incomplete effects, so it was pretty good.  All the exterior shots of, well, everything were overboard (The "inspection" of the Enterprise took 4:30 and the Lighting and launch took 4), but I'm guessing they were originally put in as both a "LOOK, SOMEONE ELSE CAN DO SPACESHIPS AS WELL AS LUCAS!!!" and padding over the commercial breaks to get the movie over 120 (and the 5 minute overture before the Production cards helped that too).  

All in all, it's not as bad as I remember or for the wrap it gets, especially if you're watching it in the context of covering the series'.  But I got the Genesis Trilogy coming up and I dig all of them.

 

Side note on Prodigy.. looks like the Voyager-A isn't the only ship that set sail.

 

 

On 7/3/2024 at 2:01 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Never thought about this before, but an Alien/Star Trek mashup would be awesome.

SNW has been doing this with everything they're doing with the Gorn.  "All Those Who Wander" was basically Alien in a Star Trek setting.  

[Raziel]

Knocked off Wrath of Khan.  It's still one of the best Trek movies ever, a great story.  The positives have been done, so I'll pick some nits:

Whatever transfer or print Paramount used to make this edition looked worn and washed in HDR ,which I was shocked at considering how good TOS, TAS, and TMP have looked thus far.  Now, it *could* have been just the opening simulator scene that looked washed and it got better and I just didn't notice, that hard, but it seemed a drop in quality over other OG era stuff.

I know it's been brought up (at least CinemaSins did it), but yeah, Khan and Chekov knowing each other was a stretch, since "Space Seed" was a S1 episode and Chekov wasn't on board until S2. But hey, we can attribute that to the Sliding Timeline theory now.  Number 2 would be, they went into a system that I'm pretty sure was reported as a "yeah, don't go fucking with Citi Alpha 5", so you think someone would look at a navigation chart while looking at Citi Alpha 6 and go "hey, this isn't really where it's supposed to be, and we're short a planet, and there's all this debris where the planet *should* be".  We're also still a hundred years from "Ya Know, maybe sending both the CO and XO by themselves on an away mission isn't a good idea".  I get why it was done in Original era, but it's odd now since on SNW you rarely see Pike and Una off the ship at the same time.  Nit 3 is after Enterprise was in an active combat situation, how many time Spock and Kirk kept putting Acamedy cadets in command of the bridge when Sulu was sitting right there.  I can kinda buy it as a "we'd rather have our most combat experienced officer driving with impled leeway to act on his own", but in that case you'd still have Uhura sitting there.  Kinda bugged me that you had 2 Commanders on the bridge and you kept leaving control of the Bridge to Lt. JG's.  

 

But yeah, other than those nits, the movie was great, as was seeing Shatner and Montalban try to out scenery chew each other despite never actually being in the same room at all during the movie.  The story of, despite his fuck up early, Kirk's experience and use of his resources (mostly Spock) won out over a more intelligent yet tunnel visioned opponent.

 

[odessasteps]

The best explanation I've heard about Khan and Chekov is that Pavel was on the Enterprise, but had not been promoted to bridge crew yet. So, he could have met him off camera or simply come across his records when he was plowing thru the ships computer records. 

[Raziel]

I mean, that works, but having watched Space Seed so recently, there wasn't really a time Khan would've interacted with Chekov directly enough to remember him.  Or, we just hand wave it to "genetic engineering" or sliding timeline and move on.  

[Zimbra]

I think they tried to address it in one of the novels by having Chekov be one of the unnamed redshirts who escorts Khan to his quarters.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I binged S2 of Prodigy this week. It's really good. It's not only a "kids" Star Trek show, but it's a Voyager sequel, especially this season. My nephew is 13 and he loves it. I have my doubts that Netflix will go ahead with a S3, but I sure hope so. 

[Raziel]

So, TSFS; This one gets a lot of shit, unfairly.  It's a good followup, with fall out from Genesis, a little out there with the Vulcan katra stuff, but not out of the ordinary for Trek.  The stealing the Enterprise scene is still great.  The self-destruct callback to "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was neat, and another show that at least Bennett was a fan of TOS and liked his callbacks.  And it was a payoff to all the time Spock saved everyone that everyone would go out of their way to save him.

TVH:  HOLY MATTE PAINTINGS BATMAN!  Yeah, there are some glairing Matte paintings of the Bird of Prey on Vulcan in Act 1, which is odd because they had full model shots from 3 (even reusing footage).  It's still a fun movie and pure Trek after the heavy 2 movies previous.  

 

Next up... aw fuck, Final Frontier.

[odessasteps]

I think Robin Curtis replacing Kirstie Alley is also something fandom holds against 3.